


Dim

by SilverOwlCity



Series: My Son, My Sun [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Father-Son Relationship, Hurt Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 21:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14703174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverOwlCity/pseuds/SilverOwlCity
Summary: Peter has long been the light in Tony's life. Sometimes, though, it feels like that light starts to dim.





	Dim

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the MCU and do not profit from the use of its characters.

**_ 2001 _ **

**_ March _ **

Tony is shocked when the phone call comes. After Abigail left his house, he’d thought he would never hear from her again. Now, she is yelling at him thought his phone. Apparently, her husband is pissed that he’d gotten her knocked up.

The words nearly make him drop the device in his hand.

While he accepts and revels in the title of playboy extraordinaire, he is very careful to avoid adultery. Before he even speaks to a woman, he looks for every sign of her being taken. He had thought Abigail was as single as he was – _is_.

She continues to yell at him for causing her husband to freak out and leave her. After a few hours, she’s stopped and tells him she isn’t keeping the child. He begs her not to do what he thinks she’s going to. She finally concedes and tells him she’s going to give the child up for adoption once it’s born. He convinces her to give him the kid – he’s always wanted a kid – instead of leaving them to orphanages.

“I don’t need this thing poisoning my marriage,” she spits at him.

It isn’t what he’s hoping for, but he takes what he can.

**_ 2001 _ **

**_ August _ **

Abigail spits in his face when he sees her at the hospital. Her husband isn’t in sight. He is told that Jacob doesn’t want to be here when the abomination is brought into the world. Tony has to stop himself from growling at the words.

Five hours after he gets to the hospital, Peter Parker Stark arrives in the world. Tony’s heart feels like it’s going to pop out of his chest. He knows instantly that he will do anything for this little boy. He has never loved anything as much as he does the little bundle in his arms.

As soon as the boy is discharged, Tony takes him back home. He’s going to give the boy everything he wishes his father had given him.

He will not ignore him as Howard had done often. He will shower the boy with affection and love and do anything – _anything_ – to protect him. The billionaire makes this promise to himself as he grins at the baby. The boy makes a mewling sound and opens his eyes.

Tony thinks the world brightens considerably.

**_ 2004 _ **

**_ June _ **

Tony can’t breathe. His Peter – his _son_ – wasn’t here. The idiot at the reception desk had allowed some man to _take his son_ from the premises. Tony isn’t sure how or why it happened but he knows that he’s going to have this facility shut down.

Luckily for him, the place isn’t so incompetent that they don’t have security cameras.

He gets the man’s face and has people looking all over the city for his son and the bastard that took him.

While he runs both Peter and his kidnapper’s faces through a facial recognition system along with security feeds from all over the city, he gets a call.

Abigail has been contacted by the kidnapper.

She screams at him for losing her child – the child she had been content giving away to never see again. In her rant, she calls the man by his name. Tony finds out all he can about the kidnapper and his ex’s relationship with him. She had broken up with Carson Reyes two weeks ago. Her husband had finally had enough with her unfaithfulness and made her choose between her boyfriends and him. She had chosen her husband.

But she had also told the man about the little boy she had given up.

Tony curses when he hears this. He isn’t sure it’s possible to hate anyone as much as he hates his son’s mother right now. He hangs up and blocks her number. He hopes he never hears from the woman again.

Scanning and searching for credit transactions and any sign of his boy, it takes him five days to track down Carson and Peter. Two days later, he’s holding the three-year-old against his chest with no intent of ever letting him go.

**_ 2008 _ **

**_ April _ **

He’s been stuck in this cave for almost two months now, he thinks. They’re playing a game he doesn’t really know the rules to and he doesn’t really want to know.

“Good roll,” Yinsen tells him. He deflects the conversation to try and find out all he could about the man.

He finds himself asking if the man has a family. “Yes, and I will see them when I leave here. And you Stark?”

Tony doesn’t answer, instead just looks at Yinsen as if he knows the answer.

“So you’re a man who has everything . . . and nothing.”

Tony doesn’t react. He doesn’t plan on surviving this ordeal. He refuses to put Peter in danger and while he wants to trust the man that saved his life, he finds he can’t.

He spends the night dreaming of a caramel-haired boy with a smile brighter than the night stars and eyes that, despite being a deep brown, are brighter than the morning sun. It’s a memory from the last time he saw his son. He hopes the kid never loses that light.

**_ 2008 _ **

**_ June _ **

Tony wakes up in the hospital after the fight with Obadiah. He can’t remember the outcome – who won or lost. He is in the hospital, which means he probably lost. His heart rate picks up and he shoots into a sitting position.

_Peter_. Obadiah knows about Peter.

He just got his son back – he isn’t ready to lose him again.

Pepper and a nurse run into the room to check on him.

“Peter,” he gasps. “Is he okay? Did Obadiah hurt him?”

His PA smiles at him softly and shakes her head. “Peter’s fine, Tony. He’s waiting for you in the hallway.”

Tony nods, heartrate falling. He feels relief flood his system as she retrieves the six year old from a seat outside.

He runs in and nearly hits the bed. His eyes are wide and he looks like he’s been crying. As he takes in his father’s form, the tears start to flow again.

“Dad,” he cries. Tony reaches out to give him an awkward one-armed hug.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Seeing the shine of the arc reactor in his son’s tears he thinks that no, it’s _really_ not okay.

**_ 2009 _ **

**_ January _ **

“Sir, something’s happened,” JARVIS’s voice says.

Tony frowns. “What is it?”

“Peter, sir,” the AI replies.

He jumps from his chair, startling the others in the meeting. There’s pain in his chest as the arc is tugged on by the movement, but he doesn’t care.

“What?” he hisses.

“Master Peter’s vehicle was hit by another vehicle on the way home from school. The driver is breathing, but is not conscious and Peter was thrown from the car.”

Tony feels like he’s going to throw up. He has JARVIS send him the address for where it happened and flies to find his son. It’s a back road and no vehicles surround the bent Stark Industries valet car. A license plate was snapped by a camera installed on the side of said vehicle before the car drove away.

After checking to make sure the man is okay, Tony searches for the plate and has a scan set up for locating it.

Images of his seven year-old-boy beaten and left on the side of the road haunt his mind. He needs to find him.

It takes JARVIS only three hours to find the car. It’s been abandoned on the side of another back road. He reverts back to the picture and from it tries his best to get a face. It isn’t perfect, but he has JARVIS find as close a match as the AI can.

The new kidnapper was an SI employee. He was a janitor that had recently been released from prison where he’d shared a cell with one of the few people that knew of Peter’s existence. When Tony finds this one, he swears he’ll kill him instead of letting him sit in prison.

It only takes two more days to find the man. With the help of his new suit, he gets his son back easily.

The boy’s left tibia had been broken in two and he had bruises on both his arms. He cries and curls himself up in his father’s arms.

“Daddy,” he weeps into the older Stark’s shoulder.

“It’s alright, Starlight, I won’t let them hurt you again,” he says.

It’s a promise he fully intends to keep.

**_ 2010 _ **

**_ July _ **

The palladium poisoning is really taking a toll on him now. It’s the first time he and Peter have been apart for more than twenty-four hours in over a year. He’s rewritten his will to give Pete to Pepper if – _when_ – he dies.

He’s trying to find a way to stop the poison in his system. As much as he thinks he deserves death, he doesn’t want to leave his son. His son is the best thing in his life and, for some unfathomable reason, loves his father more than anything.

So, when Fury gives him a video with Howard claiming Tony was his greatest creation, he doesn’t complain (much). Instead, he swallows his pride and deals with his old man’s blatant lies. He manages to figure out how to create the element that will save his life.

Though the man was the bane of his existence, he feels grateful for what his father has given him. And that is the weirdest feeling in the world.

**_ 2010 _ **

**_ October _ **

The Stark Expo was supposed to be a good thing, damn it.  Now Vanko, Hammer, and their stupid robot army had destroyed the entire thing. He knew Pepper and Peter were here and prayed they’d gotten out.

His heart stops when he sees a little boy holding his hand up toward a robot. A gun rises from the suit’s shoulder and aims for the kid. Tony speeds over to land behind the boy and shoot the robot down.

The kid jumps and turns to look at him in surprise.

“Nice work, kid,” he says, flying off to another part of the disaster.

When he has JARVIS locate Peter and realizes his son’s outfit matches the one the boy had been wearing, his heartbeat speeds up. That brave little boy was his _son – his little star_. He pulls the boy into a tight hug against him, uncaring as he lets tears fall from his eyes.

**_ 2012 _ **

**_ May _ **

Tony knows he can’t save everyone, but he has to try. So he fights with everything he has to defeat the Chitauri and Loki. He can’t prevent the damage, but he tries. Because there are people down there – _families_ down there.

His Rhodey, his Happy, his Pepper, his _Peter_ are all down there. And it’s a selfish reason, he knows, but he really can’t bring himself to care.

Then they get the call about Fury’s nuke. Suddenly, his little makeshift family isn’t as important as the millions of people that can – and will – die at a moment’s notice. He does what he has to do.

He attempts to call Pepper and apologize for what he’s doing. In his message he tells her to inform everyone just how much he loves everyone. He throws the nuke as far as he can as his suit goes out. The blast throws him backward toward the portal but it’s closing and _he can’t breathe_.

His eyes close against his will and he slips into darkness.

**_ 2012 _ **

**_ July _ **

The Avengers have been living in their – his – Tower since the battle with the Chitauri. They’ve developed some weird family-like dynamic in doing so.

Tony’s moved Peter to live with and old friend Benjamin Parker and his wife May. He hopes it’ll be safer for the boy.

Pepper, of course, immediately disagrees. She argues with him that there is no safer place for Petr tha in a tower filled with superheroes.

It’s at those words that Tony tells her what happened – all of it.

“They were controlled, Pepper,” he hisses. “If they know about him and it happens again, I don’t know that he’ll actually _be safe_ with the superheroes.”

Pepper nods, not liking the terror in her boss’s eyes. The never bring up the topic again and the Avengers never learn Tony has a son.

**_ 2012 _ **

**_ December _ **

He knows what he’s doing is reckless, but he’s beyond pissed. Happy is hurt, maybe dying, and he just can’t handle it. He is tired of everyone he loves betraying him or getting kidnapped or dying. He’s just tired.

So it is safe to say Tony Stark is not in his right mind when he invites the Mandarin to his place. Luckily, Peter is at school – in New York. He is glad he’d decided to move his son to the Tower instead of keeping him in Malibu.

His relief doesn’t quite take away the pain of falling into the ocean.

:

Somehow, JARVIS takes him to Tennessee where he meets a boy just a little bit older than Pete. The kid helps him get out of the town and fix his suit. He wants to help the kid, but has a feeling his presence will be bad for him.

:

Everything’s finished by Christmas.

He and Pepper return to the Tower the morning of the twenty-fifth. Peter is a little ball of energy. Though they can see his curious gaze, he doesn’t ask. As the eleven-year-old gives them their homemade cards and presents and then their store bought items, Tony smiles.

What did he do to deserve such a great kid?

**_ 2015 _ **

**_ January _ **

Tony and Bruce finish their creation sooner than either had every hoped. Of course, the thing is born of fear and goes off the rails.

He’d built Ultron to protect people and it is doing the exact opposite. There are kids that fucking _volunteered_ for HYDRA to experiment on them. Of course the world has gone to shit and it’s entirely his fault.

He doesn’t understand why he can’t do anything right.

But then he remembers meeting Barton’s wife and kids. They reminded him so much of the thirteen-year-old creating watches and upgrading tablets in his workshops and Tony thinks maybe not everything he’s ever done ends in disaster.

**_ 2015 _ **

**_ December _ **

Tony doesn’t like Oscorp. He’s never liked Oscorp – and it’s not just because they’re his biggest competitor. Norman Osborn creeps him out. He doesn’t trust any of the man’s research, but the man is leading the world in medicines.

So Peter’s freshman biology class just so happens to visit Oscorp. And it just so happens that Peter gets bitten by a radioactive spider during this visit.

He uses his new powers as best he can. Unlike his father, he doesn’t announce it to the world. Spider-Man just sort of appears one day. He does what he can. Sure, it’s not as big as the Avengers, but he does what he can.

For now, that’s enough.

**_ 2016 _ **

**_ June _ **

Tony is pissed.

Peter has been lying for months, parading around like some sort of hero. Steve – Captain America – can’t seem to take a hint or _talk_. He needs to get Cap to see just exactly why they need the Accords. And to do that, he needs numbers.

He doesn’t yell at Peter when he confronts his son about being the internet famous Spider-Man. Instead he tells him their going on a field trip. He knows there’s a possibility of this going to a fight, but he doesn’t think it will.

Of course, he’s wrong.

Peter holds up well enough, taking the hints his father had given him. Then suddenly, the boy is on the ground being told to “ _Stay down_.”

He gives his son a wary glance before chasing after Cap’s jet. And then, Rhodey falls.

Rhodey falls and no one catches him. He could be dead for all they know and they still leave.

So, yeah, Tony is pissed.

He follows them to Siberia. He sees the video of Barnes killing his parents – killing his _mother_. Steve knew – _HE KNEW!_

The same Steve that was always preaching about honesty, the same Steve that wanted the team to bond and be together no matter what, _knew what Barnes had done_.

Some friend he was. And he thought defending Barnes was right. Tony understood – really he did. He knew that Barnes wasn’t himself, had seen the affects the words had on him. Logically, Tony knew all this. But, damn, it still hurt.

Of course Tony is pissed.

He’s broken too.

But the world doesn’t want, need, or get to know that.

**_ 2016 _ **

**_ October _ **

He tells Peter to stay out of it – the kid doesn’t listen and nearly gets himself killed.

He doesn’t like yelling at him, but there is pure adrenaline, pure fear coursing through his blood, so he does the one thing he’s positive will keep Peter safe. He takes Peter’s suit and hopes that’ll be the end of things.

Instead, Peter returns to his old suit and _fights the fucking Vulture_.

Peter is so tired and in so much pain when he returns to May’s that evening, he spills everything. And Tony knows his son will be the death of him. He knows the damage Toomes had caused. But no matter what the man had done, how broken he’d left Tony’s son, beneath the tattered armor, Tony can still see his son’s light.

The next day, he brings his son to the Tower and spends the day checking him over. Tests are run to make sure the plane crash and the building didn’t do any permanent damage. (Peter insists he’s fine more than once, to which his father’s response is, “ _A building fell on top of you – you are not_ fine _, Peter_.”)

Once everything is done and he’s determined that his Spider-Kid is in one piece, Tony refuses to stop hugging him. He pulls the boy to his chest as if he’ll disappear at any moment. It’s a familiar feeling – one that Tony can’t stand.

They both know they have a lot to talk about, a lot to fix, but right now none of that matters. All that matters is that they’re both alive and they plan on keeping it that way.

**_ 2017 _ **

**_ February _ **

Tony happily sends his son to school for a field trip. Then he goes on a walk with his fiancée. The day is warm and sunny and perfect until BAM – new, evil aliens have decided to invade again.

He doesn’t remember much of the fight, but he knows about half-way through is when Peter shows up. He gets himself taken into _space_ – _fucking space_ – and decides to take off his mask.

Tony nearly has a heart attack as his son’s figure plummets toward the earth before the Iron Spider armor wraps itself around him and parachutes him away.

He tries to find Strange and has managed to do so when his son makes himself known again. He’s almost positive he has at least three hundred gray hairs from today alone.

( _“You were supposed to go home.”_

_“Look, Dad, you can’t be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man if there is no neighborhood.”_

_“You’re grounded.”_

_“That’s fair.”_ )

They manage to kill Squidward and save Strange. Peter and Tony then figure out how to get the damn thing to return from whence it came. And as dangerous as the whole situation is, Tony can’t deny he’s entirely intrigued by the idea of being in space. Peter, on the other hand, makes no attempt to hide his giddiness.

The three land – _crash_ – the weird space donut on its planet of origin. These other people (aliens, actually) show up and they fight. Tony’s getting tired of fighting and feels his blood boil when they threaten his son.

Luckily for everyone, they’re all fighting against Thanos. The six people work together to come up with a plan to defeat the giant, shriveled grape.

It almost works too.

Peter’s tugging at the gauntlet, his father beside him when suddenly everything goes sideways. Quill’s freaking out and his father has to go try and calm the other man down and get him to help. The teen feels the gauntlet loosening under his hands and it’s about to give way when Thanos blasts him backward.

The titan throws moons at his father while Peter attempts to catch the others so they won’t hurt themselves.

He screams when his father is stabbed with a broken bit of the suit and pushed backward. He doesn’t register what’s happening until after Strange has given up the time stone.

:

They are all finally conscious and somewhat safe and better when it happens.

Mantis goes first, crumbling in the wind. Drax follows her without a word. Quill takes a single step back.

“Steady Quill,” Tony says with apprehension coloring his voice. The other man dissolves into dust.

Strange is apologetic. Tony realizes he knew this was going to happen. “Tony,” he tells the man in defeat, “there was no other way.” With no further explanation, and before Tony can ask, the sorcerer joins the rest of their small troupe.

“Dad,” his son mutters, “I don’t feel so good.”

What happens next is Tony’s worst nightmare. His son is terrified and he can see him fighting to hold on. He watches that fight leave his son – his precious, _precious_ Peter – moments after they fall to the ground.

“I’m sorry.” His eyes lock with his father’s as he turns to ash in his arms, his last words a whisper on the wind.


End file.
